March 21, 2006

More on the LRB's Israel Lobby article at the Engage site. This time David Hirsh has run the headline: Where the London Review of Books Meets the Ku Klux Klan. They even have a picture of Klansmen in front of a burning cross. Apparently David Duke likes the article so this makes it anti-semitic. Imagine, if Dr Hirsh had read the New York Sun (yes he links to the New York Sun as a serious comment on antisemitism) sooner, he wouldn't have had to misrepresent the article. He could have simply said, or said simply, that David Duke likes it. He's tried this brand of illogic before on Nick Cohen's site.

the American racist David Duke uses the same terminology to describe Zionism as does Joseph Massad, the anti-Zionist academic at Columbia - “Jewish Supremacism”.

Here's my reply

Comparing David Duke to Joseph Massad is disgusting even by your appalling standards. David Duke links every event in world history to the Jews whilst Joseph Massad has very clearly stated that Palestinians have been victims of European anti-semitism as surely, if not (so far) as intensely, as Jews have. I’m surprised at a great academic like you not knowing that. Except of course you do know that and you are just smearing a better person than yourself.

In fairness, he backed down:

I didn’t compare Massad to Duke. I simply pointed out that Duke uses the same central phrase, “Jewish supremacism” to analyse Jewish and Zionist power throughout the world. And Massad does think that Zionism is a global phenomenon.

My point was not that Massad and Duke were the same but that contemporary antisemitism is nearly always anti-Zionist.

But now it seems that zionists across their narrow racist spectrum are ditching any pretence of reasonableness and he is back to the comparison he couldn't sustain when he couldn't control the comments. As it happens, I think he's flipped.

Still, just in case I get likened to David Duke by David Hirsh, I'd better point out that I just hate blueberry pie.